


out of the strong comes sweetness

by aerialiste



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Black Panther (2018) Post-Credits Scene, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Credits Scene, Comfort No Hurt, Dreamsharing, Goats, M/M, Nomad Steve Rogers, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Wakanda, like really there are a lot of goats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:06:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14670750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/pseuds/aerialiste
Summary: When Bucky wakes up again, the first face he sees is Shuri’s.





	out of the strong comes sweetness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cascat](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cascat).



_And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle. (Judges 14:14, KJV)_

•

When Bucky wakes up again, the first face he sees is Shuri’s.

She’s leaning forward over a console, waving her hands impatiently over something pale blue and shimmering, an oval twisting in the shadows. Then she does something with one of her hands and the oval fans apart, sectioned into slices, panels that she pushes around and tinkers with, inserting an impossibly thin glowing instrument, ripples of light thrown by her fluid movements. It takes him several long moments to identify what he’s looking at: it’s a brain, a scan of a brain. His brain.

He must make a noise because she looks up at him then, eyes sharp and assessing. Her hair is gathered up into a crown of braids and she has tiny brilliant white dots of paint accentuating her shapely brows and high cheekbones. He thinks she may be the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, and then she smiles and he knows she is. He makes another sound, an inquisitive one. He can’t move his arm or legs, and she puts her hand on his, still smiling.

“Your brain is a hot mess, my friend,” she says, “but fortunately for you, _your_ friends brought you to me, and I’m the best.”

Bucky believes her. She lets go of his hand and takes a step back, so he can see the brain scan, and she points to an area that’s not lit up, that makes a dark jagged scar down the middle.

“This is between your parietal and occipital lobes,” she says, her hands careful as she taps the dark seam delicately with her instrument. “They were trying to control your pain levels and movement, but they were clumsy and careless, so the implant also touches on your memory and speech centers. That’s why you were aphasic, and amnesiac. And why you kept trying to kill people.”

She closes the display with a swift motion of her hands and looks at him again, her face gone serious. “I had to wake you up, to start reversing the damage from undoing much _worse_ damage. Can you tell me your name?”

He opens his mouth but all that comes out is a croak. Gradually he starts to take it all in: a quiet soothing hum in the background, as of an oscillating fan. He’s neither cool nor warm. He’s lying on something firm but squishy, like a gel, attached to what he guesses is an IV, but floating in the air. Four-point restraints—no, wait: three point. The arm is still off and the relief of its absence is so heady, he hopes they won’t have to put it back on. Even when it works correctly, it aches and pulls, the bone of the socket yanked around with every movement, a heavy dragging sensation that wrenches at his mind as much as his shoulder.

He can’t tell what he’s wearing, but whatever it is feels light, not scratchy or uncomfortable. There are windows everywhere, but the lighting is dim and muted. He never wants to move again.

The girl—a scientist? his doctor?—holds a cup of water to his mouth and he drinks, then swallows, then tries again. “I’m Bucky. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.” Not the other guy. Never that guy, again.

She smiles at him brilliantly, like he did something right, although she also seems like she’s trying not to laugh. “And where are you, and what year is it?”

She gives him more water before he answers. “Wakanda?” But when. “2017.”

This time she does laugh, but kindly. “That was last year, but we had you under for a while so that I could develop the programming. It is now 2018, however, the middle of spring—March 13, in English—and you are still in Wakanda. I am Shuri, sister to T’Challa the king. And, fortunately for you, a genius.” She turns back to her workstation, humming a little under her breath.

Bucky has no idea what’s going on at this point, but he trusts Shuri instinctively. She seems capable and confident and her hands have a life of their own, dipping back over the illuminated screens and awakening panels, shunting them to one side, pulling up new displays, magnifying, rearranging, as if her hands are thinking for her. The twinkle in her eyes reminds him of his little sister.

He wonders, drifting, if the Winter Soldier ever looked for Rebecca. If some part of him knows where and how she lived, and whether she died, or is maybe somewhere old and alone and in need of help, his help. Steve would have taken care of it, he realizes, and falls asleep again in mid-thought, reassured.

•

He drifts for a couple of days between being awake and asleep, and sometimes both at the same time. He wakes from vivid dreams of Brooklyn and the Alps, Kiev and Sebastopol and Bagram, to see Shuri with each hand in a different display, wielding tiny fingertip tools like microscopic soldering irons. Sparks of flashing blue fire reflect in her goggles as she asks him the same questions over and over ( _what is your favorite song? can you tell me the lyrics? who played in the World Series in 1932? I’m going to say four words, and you say them back to me: apple, penny, table, justice_ ), fine-tuning him like a concert grand.

One day he is well enough to come out of the restraints and sit up. The medical bay is unlike anything he’s ever seen—better than SHIELD, way better than HYDRA. What look like small circular robots float around silently at night and clean everything. Shuri brings him a bowl of plain mashed potatoes and even without butter he thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever had.

The next day she brings him soap and a mirror, scissors and a razor, and lets him shave. He figures he’ll let it grow out again but apparently things got a little out of control in cryostasis; in the mirror he looks like he’s from the Wild West or something. A robot hovers nearby helpfully, collecting all the wisps of hair that drift to the floor from his scissors. There’s some grey now, mixed in with the brown. Shuri watches him, silent, which he now knows is rare for her, so she must be thinking.

“Here,” she says, snapping something black off her wrist, and hands it to him. It’s a hair tie, and he accepts it, struggling a little to pull the strands back and secure them so they’re not hanging in his face. He does an okay job.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she begins, and he shakes his head.

“Just Bucky,” he says, and when she starts to laugh again he’s well enough this time to ask her what’s so funny about his name.

“It means…something else in Wakandan,” she says, shaking with repressed mirth, eyes dancing.

Oh my god. “Are you trying to tell me my name is a dirty word?” His Brooklyn accent is back, and he can’t remember when he lost it.

“No!” Shuri assures him hastily. Then, losing it again: “Okay, yes. We cannot call you that.”

“Great,” says Bucky, standing up experimentally. He’s been walking back and forth to the can; his legs seem fine, but getting up and down with only one arm is still a balancing act. “How about James? Or does that mean something bad, too?”

“James is fine,” Shuri says. Then: “We would like to offer you a room in the palace now, James. There is no longer any need for you to remain in my medical bay, getting your…hair everywhere.”

“No,” says Bucky involuntarily, and then remembers his manners. “No, thank you. I mean, you’ve saved my life. And I owe you. But I don’t belong in a palace.” He gestures out the clear side of the bay, its tinted floor-to-ceiling window glass, out to the plains of yellowed grass that stretch along all the way to the river, where people with staffs are watering their flocks. Out there.

“What? You want to stay with the goat-herders?” Shuri says in disbelief, through peals of laughter.

Until she sees how serious his face is.

•

Bucky moves in with a white-haired man named Olayemi, who’s apparently the father of someone very important, but who has a spare hut for some reason, and who isn’t much given to conversation. It suits Bucky just fine.

Anyway he’s always slept better on the ground than in a bed; the darkness and silence lull him to sleep at night, and the sun coming through the woven grass ceiling wakes him slowly every morning. He has to work through a couple bad memories (an assignment in Khartoum; another one in Nairobi), and he still can’t string together many thoughts in a row, but it’s good. It’s better than good.

Olayemi gives him a set of three black clay bowls that nest together, tied with a dark indigo scarf-thing, and Bucky washes his dishes in the stream after every meal of goat’s milk or cheese, bitter greens that taste like heaven to him, and usually some small round purple and red root vegetables, like little potatoes, only tangy and crunchy. A couple times a week they have roasted goat meat, and Olayemi and the other goatherds sing a long complicated song with a lot of verses, which Bucky gathers is about thanking the goat and apologizing to it for cutting short its happy life in the fields. Whenever Bucky forgets and tells them his name is Bucky, they all laugh so hard they can barely breathe, and then start calling him something else, he doesn’t know what. His white undershirt finally comes apart at the seams, and Olayemi gives him an impossibly soft length of red fabric that Bucky wraps around himself and ties at one shoulder, the way the other goatherds do, like a toga.

At least once a day Shuri comes down from the palace to see him and run scans on his brain with her little hand-held device. She doesn’t ever say anything about what she sees, but she seems pleased with her work.

After a couple of weeks, King T’Challa comes with her one morning—some more bad memories that Bucky has to grit his teeth through, but T’Challa doesn’t seem angry. He brings a message from Steve, asking to visit, but Bucky shakes his head, feeling wrung out and hollow, and just says no, without explaining why. His eyes sting and he sort of wishes he could cry, but he can’t.

The goatherds’ children find him hilarious. They’re led by a little rabble-rouser named Adaku; she likes to steal potatoes from Bucky’s breakfast, and he shows her how to skip rocks on the wide flat surface of the river. They can’t understand each other but somehow it works out. He tells the kids fairy tales he remembers—Jack and the beanstalk, little Red Riding Hood and the wolf—acting out both the hero part and the bad-guy part, but not making it too scary, because they’re just little kids.

Adaku and her friends don’t seem scared, though. Instead, when he’s the bad guy, they chase him fiercely through the camp, play-fighting, using sticks for swords and little handmade toy shields that make him think of him and Stevie on long summer days, playing knights with garbage can lids. The children glitter when they run, something blue and metallic threaded through their clothing, maybe for protection, Bucky thinks. He teaches them a few English words: _hello, bowl, tea, sweet, smile_ — _sweet_ is for the dates they sometimes bring him, brown and sticky and grainy with sugar. _Wolf_ they pick up on their own, from the story, and follow him chanting it: _wolf, wolf!_ He pretends to growl and howl, and they crawl up his arms and legs, pinning him to the grass and pretend-stabbing him with their stick-knives as they laugh and laugh.

That he can let this happen without reacting seems like a miracle, to him.

•

In a few weeks he helps the herders shear their little white longhaired goats, tossing each floaty soft fleece onto a pile that grows so high it topples, and then they start another. He’s figured out that’s why all the cloaks and wraps and blankets are as soft as cashmere. As they work, everyone sings, and during the week-long shearing he starts to pick up more words, even some swears. There’s a quick-paced song he likes, asking over and over who made the baby cry ( _onye mere nwa nebe akwa?_ ); another one about an eagle, another about a leopard who hunts goats. He contributes whatever songs he can remember, mostly old dance numbers, marching tunes from the army, a lullabye their mom used to sing to Becks when she was a baby.

He makes a lot of mistakes, trying to learn how to shear one-armed, and everyone makes fun of him all the time, but somehow the incessant teasing never hurts his feelings. Instead it’s like being back on his old block in Brooklyn; the jokes are constant, merciless and hilarious, and it makes him feel like he matters to them. Shuri comes down after lunch one afternoon to watch the shearing, which turns into dinner, with a fizzy fermented drink like beer, and of course she tells the best jokes, all elaborate set-up and then a beat, her eyes sparkling, and finally the killer punchline, delivered perfectly.

On the last day of the shearing, he meets his new sparring partners.

“I am M’Baku, leader of the Jabari, and Shuri tells me you are a soldier,” the tall, broad man says one afternoon, stopping directly in front of him without any preamble. Bucky is still brushing goat hair off his face and shaking out the blue scarf, which he’s stopped using to tie up his bowls and started wearing to cover up his shoulder socket, still healing, incredibly slowly, from the deep bruises left by the arm. For a while the kids had to do it for him, but now he’s deft at tying the knot one-handed.

“Was,” Bucky corrects, looping the scarf, then squinting up at him. M’Baku taps the ground impatiently with the end of his spear. He’s kind of ridiculously good-looking; Bucky always has liked the beefy ones.

“You cannot stop fighting, James. Once you are a warrior you will always be one.”

“Maybe so,” says Bucky diffidently, still sizing him up. M’Baku is wearing thick leather armor, with fur-edged shoulder pads that make his already broad shoulders even wider, with a skirt made out of the same plant fiber that roofs the goatherds’ huts. Bucky looks around, but all the other herders seem to have disappeared; even the children are mysteriously gone. He starts to feel uneasy.

“M’Baku, stop terrorizing the man,” says an accented alto voice, and someone Bucky has only seen from a distance steps around him, coming neatly between him and Bucky.

Bucky can’t remember ever hearing her name, but once she visited Olayemi and he thinks they might be related. Her armor is crimson red, with a beautiful bronze neck collar he kind of envies. “I am General Okoye, and you are staying with my blood-father,” she tells him, and suddenly Bucky realizes that she’s also always at the head of the troops he sees doing training exercises, and is probably the Wakandan equivalent of five-star brass. He wonders if he should salute, or kneel, or genuflect or something.

Instead he holds out his hand, polite. “Sergeant Barnes. Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Later he figures he shouldn’t have been surprised when she shoves a knife handle into it.

“Yes, sergeant, we know who you are. We are both here to teach you to fight, so you can stand alongside us.”

Bucky looks down at the knife, which has some kind of fancy blade shaped like a leaping panther. They’re really into cats around here. “Do you, do you have enemies?”

“Freedom always has enemies,” Okoye says easily, and then laughs. Bucky wonders why until he follows her eyes down to his hand, which is flipping the knife end-over-end, easily, with a half-spin on every rotation. “Try me,” she says, and then she’s rushing him, her own spear tossed to M’Baku as she plucks another knife from her belt; and suddenly they’re sparring, and Bucky’s not even thinking, just working through the pattern of movement: _step, sidestep, parry, twist, lunge_ , and M’Baku is watching them, looking smug.

“Not a soldier anymore! Good joke, James Buchanan Barnes.”

•

They spar together every day after that; sometimes Okoye alone, sometimes M’Baku alone, sometimes all three of them, trading off wordlessly when one or the other of them needs a break. Bucky learns the words for _left_ and _right_ ( _òsi, ọtun_ ) and the names of various styles of blades. He learns that Okoye grew up in the corps of the Dora Milaje, away from the man she calls her blood-father, who was more or less just the sperm donor; she considers her oath-sisters to be her family, although her biological mother Ngozi spends an evening teaching Bucky how to make the jeweled vegetable pilaf that’s rapidly become his favorite food (the secret is a taro-root glaze). He learns that he's capable of attraction again, of arousal, the heavy pulse in his body when M'Baku grabs him and throws him down, thighs straddling Bucky's, his eyes warm with something unspoken.

He’s surprised by how much he enjoys training with them, he guesses maybe because it’s just for play and no one’s actually trying to kill him. M’Baku mostly relies on intimidation and using his weight against an opponent, but Okoye is a more subtle fighter, magnificently talented, as good as Natasha or probably, if Bucky’s being honest, even better; she has no hesitation and thinks a dozen moves ahead seemingly without effort, and every movement telegraphs complete conviction in her purpose. Natasha, he thinks with a pang, is as compromised as he is. There’s something about having never done wrong that makes you a better warrior, probably.

Whatever. Bucky is what he is, and he tries not to think about Mogadishu, or Damascus. Those weren’t him. Or it was him, but he wasn’t himself. Or it was him, but he’s a goatherd now. His nightmares are better; they don’t last as long and he wakes up gasping instead of screaming.

But when the goats have grown out enough new coat to be protected from the chilly nights, the goat-herders tell him, they’re going up to the mountains for the summer, where it’s cooler and where there is fresh new green grass for the flocks, not the sere, dried-brown summer prairie of the palace grounds. They tell him this as they’re packing one night to leave the next morning; or maybe they tried to tell him earlier, and he just didn’t understand. Couldn’t track, didn’t speak the language.

Olayemi finally makes him understand that they’re going to have a feast that night, to celebrate the end of the lowland season, and to welcome him to their group, since he hung in there through the shearing, even though they’re paradoxically about to leave him. Bucky wants to go with them, and keeps telling them that, and Olayemi keeps trying to explain why they won’t take him, until finally they both give up in frustration. Bucky heads up the hill toward the palace to ask Shuri, who hasn’t visited in a couple weeks anyway, and Bucky figures he’s due for a checkup.

She’s in her lab as usual, but sitting in a car that isn’t really there. This confuses Bucky, who’s always been honestly kind of confused by cars anyway, how they manage to go so fast these days but also handle so poorly.

“James!” She bounces out of the (shimmering, illusory) driver’s seat, and Bucky can hear the bass line of the music even with her earbuds still in, so he knows she can’t hear a word he says. He reaches forward slowly, still careful to telegraph all his movements beforehand (for his own benefit as much as anyone else’s—he’s cautious with this new body) and gently tugs one loose. She frowns and tries to snatch it out of his hand. “I could _hear_ you.”

“Uh-huh. Listen, Shuri. I want to go into the mountains, with the goatherds. Why can’t I?”

Shuri, normally so open, turns her face a little to one side. “That, you must ask the king.”

Bucky feels his eyes narrowing. “When? Will he be there tonight?”

“We will all be there, to celebrate your healing and to mark the end of the season. I’m bringing potato salad.”

“Oh, yeah? Is it as good as Mrs. Schneiderman’s, from one block over?”

“You are ten million years old and also yes, it is even better.”

“Because she puts minced sweet pickles in hers, and German mustard. Okay, okay already,” Bucky says, and surrenders her earbud. “I’ll ask him. Whatever’s coming, I don’t want to fight in it.”

“None of us do,” says Shuri, a little muted, with that abstract look on her face again. Bucky wants to tickle it away, but instead he closes his fingers around hers.

“If we have to, then we will,” he promises. “I will.” And she looks up at him quickly through her eyelashes, just a sidelong flick, but it registers with him as something he hasn’t seen on anyone’s face in a long, long time: gratitude.

•

Ngozi helps him make about ten times the usual amount of jeweled vegetable pilaf, and contributes an enormous cast-iron pot full of braised goat in a thick, rich, tomato-red sauce, as well as a mess of fried okra rolled in cornmeal, which Bucky had years ago in Harlem and loves more than candy.

They’ve all just begun to sit down together, kids running every which way, goat hides and cashmere blankets spread out on the ground like picnic cloths, when T’Challa and Shuri show up. After a lot of bowing and a few long speeches, Bucky finally has a giant spongy piece of flatbread in his hands, and is just about to tear it into pieces and start in on the okra, when T’Challa sits down next to him with a large dark purple bottle. Bucky hopes it has in it what he thinks it does. M’Baku keeps looking their way and Bucky can feel M’Baku’s eyes on him, warm and brown and interested. He tries to ignore it.

“Drink with me, new friend,” says T’Challa, holding out one of the black clay cups, which sparkles with tiny bits of mica or maybe quartz. Sometimes it seems that even the plainest things in Wakanda have some surreal glitter to them, making everything eerie and beautiful.

“Sure, I can handle that,” says Bucky after a moment, though he makes himself eat some of the flatbread before trying the drink T’Challa pours, and then he’s glad he did. It’s milky, poisonously sweet and strong as hell, and T’Challa has the second shot ready before Bucky’s finished downing the first one.

“So the children are calling you _White Wolf_ , Shuri says.” Bucky isn’t fooled by T’Challa’s casual tone; this guy has been a strategist from birth.

“Just a nickname. Since my own name is apparently indecent.”

T’Challa laughs, like everyone does, but silently, eyes closed, and then suddenly wide open and looking into Bucky’s fiercely. “And you? Are you a decent man?”

Bucky swallows a second cup of the liqueur. It goes down less like fire this time, more like honey.

“I owe you a debt. Shuri, you. Olayemi. Everyone. You could have thrown me out as soon as Shuri got me more or less walking in a straight line, but you didn’t.” He looks straight at T’Challa. “If you need me, I already told Shuri I’m there. But I don’t want to kill. Let me do something else—pull casualties out of the line, take care of civilians, the wounded—hell, I’ll roll bandages.”

T’Challa tosses back his own second shot and then makes happy noises over Shuri’s potato salad. “We will speak of this later. For now, let us appreciate the work that brought us this food.”

•

The dinner goes on for a really long time, because whatever else the Wakandans have going on, they know how to throw a party. The kids play a familiar game where they chant as they hide in the tall grass and the underbrush, and one of them has to find the rest; the words are something like _cover your eyes, go and hide / the chief will kill whoever he finds_. It seems like a kind of violent song for Wakanda, but he knows kids are like that, always into gory macabre stuff.

Finally even the kids are nodding off, and Bucky and T’Challa take the bottle of alcohol and wander off from the campfires to look at the stars in the purple night sky. To his shock, Bucky, who’s surprisingly drunk (he didn’t even think he could get drunk anymore), hears himself confessing that he feels more at home here, now, than he has anywhere since the last time HYDRA wiped him.

“But do you not miss your friends?” asks T’Challa, sounding genuinely curious.

“No,” says Bucky honestly. Then, after a long moment: “Well. Steve, probably. Some.”

“That is good,” T’Challa says, sounding pleased with himself, “because Captain Rogers will be here tomorrow. And then, my new friend”—he grips Bucky by the arm, looking into his eyes—“although none of us has sought this, we must make ready for a war.”

•

The fires are banked but Bucky can’t sleep. He takes first watch with the Dora Milaje, a trio of young women he hasn’t met before who roll their eyes at his knife-flipping, and show him with silent efficiency a nifty trick for disarming someone with a short blade at close quarters. They practice until the moon starts to come up, low and red in the east, and then it’s second watch.

Bucky heads back to the goatherds’ camp, stopping to drink from the stream and splash his face with its ice-cold water. He stays there a long time, zoning out, letting his hand dangle limply in the current, trying to remember the last thing Steve said to him before the cryostasis. But he can’t get the words right, just the look on his face. Just his eyes, those huge wounded pools of uncertainty and regret and something else Bucky can’t parse. He gives up, dries his hand by running it through his hair, and curls up in the soft woolen blankets of his hut without bothering to undress.

He’s only half-surprised when he wakes, not a quarter-hour later, hearing someone humming softly outside his hut: it’s the hide-and-go-seek song.

Bucky sticks his head out, squinting in the now-moonlight. It’s M’Baku, who leans his spear up against the side of the hut and then studies Bucky, head on one side, his face unreadable. “Oh for god’s sake, get in here,” Bucky finally says, grabbing a handful of his skirt and pulling until, crouching so low he almost has to kneel, M’Baku comes inside.

“Your hut is small, James.”

Bucky shoves at him. “Big enough for most.”

At first they collide in the darkness, then connect, hands finding each other; and it’s as uncomplicated as sparring, and almost as fun. M’Baku flips Bucky around so that he’s on top, straddling M’Baku, fumbling at the knot of his cloak; and then it’s all easy heat and motion, the slick glide of their stomachs, wet with sweat, and steady pressure on his cock. They come almost as an afterthought, and Bucky’s still catching his breath, wondering how M’Baku figured out he was a queer when he kept that shit on tight lockdown from his Howling Commandos days forward, or anyway he tries to—when suddenly M’Baku shifts and raises himself on one elbow, looking up at him.

“I do not want you to have hurt feelings, James.”

Bucky tries not to laugh, because that would be rude. “We’re good. You’re not my first hookup.”

Even in the barely there moonlight, M’Baku looks relieved. “Besides,” Bucky continues, teasingly, “there’s a weaver out there who’s awful sweet on you.”

M’Baku had started playing with a strand of his hair, and the motion freezes. “What do you mean.”

“Adeoye? That tall guy, with the legs,” says Bucky, surprised. “I thought you knew. Everyone knows.”

M’Baku turns his face away and in the darkness Bucky can only hear him breathing. “But he is a worshipper of Bast, and those of the panther tribe have no use for my people.”

“I don’t know about any of that, man,” Bucky says, sitting up and reaching for a corner of blanket, to dry off his stomach, “but he’s definitely interested. He’s been watching us spar for weeks—he can hardly take his damn eyes off you. And have you noticed his legs?” Adeoye in fact had incredibly shapely calves, thighs you could crack a kola nut on, and eyelashes that seemingly went on for days. “You should go for it. Carve him a loom or something. Give him flowers. Or knives.”

“Boju boju,” says M’Baku softly, and shakes his head. “I am an idiot.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” agrees Barnes, and he totally deserves the sucker-punch that gets him.

•

After M’Baku leaves, Bucky can’t get back to sleep. He lies there watching old regrets circling and prowling across the floor like shadows, until he finally gets up and goes looking for Ngozi, who cold-brews an herbal tea that can knock him out when nothing can. He’ll oversleep tomorrow, but that way at least he won’t have to say goodbye when the herders move out.

Ngozi is awake, of course, writing on a flatscreen computer tablet of some kind. Her hut has a solar panel and he knows she’s a night owl, so he doesn’t feel bad about asking her for the tea. She barely looks up, just points out the jar to him. Bucky pours the tea into another container, filtering out twigs and berries and leaves, then takes a long swallow straight from the jar. Ngozi asks him a question he can’t understand; he thinks she wants to know how much he had to drink earlier that night, so he holds up four fingers, which isn’t…accurate, exactly, but then he only _has_ five fingers.

She shoots a look at him like she knows he’s lying, and then makes a long tart speech, pointing at his head repeatedly. He only understands something about _dreams, dreaming_ , and _bad, very bad_. Finally Ngozi just shrugs and goes back to her tablet pointedly, muttering under her breath. He finishes the liquid in the jar, thanks her, and creeps back to his hut, already groggy.

And his dreams aren’t bad, per se; but they are completely crazy.

First he’s in that little town outside Cherbourg, lying curled up in a tiny cramped church-bell tower to provide sniper cover for Steve as usual; only he has a goatherd’s crook instead of a rifle, and little potatoes for bullets. Nothing’s right, so he tries to call out to Steve, to warn him, except he can’t make a sound. But when he looks down he just sees Steve dancing with Peggy, her red skirt flaring out around her legs with every spin, so it’s okay, they’re not in danger, everything is okay.

And then he’s with Romanoff and they’re fighting underwater, with waving green seaweed tangling around his ankles, and he’s thrashing to get to the surface, he needs _air_ —but Natasha shakes him, shouting soundlessly into his face in Russian, _breathe, just breathe!_ And he drags in a breath, desperate, and she’s right, somehow it works—he’s inhaling water, but he’s fine, he’s totally fine.

Then: “…Bucky?” he hears Steve asking, sounding disoriented; and when he turns toward the sound, Steve’s sitting up in a narrow twin bed, shirtless, sheets gathered around his waist. He hasn’t ever seen Steve like this, with long burnished dark hair and a thick beard, looking a little feral around the eyes, and having already racked back the slide and thumbed off the safety. He points the gun directly at Bucky, gaze unwavering.

“You’re not Bucky. He’s in Wakanda, and no one knows where we are.” Bucky looks down at himself, figuring dream-Steve is right, surprised to see himself wearing his Army fatigues, both arms intact.

“No, Stevie, I’m me. It’s really me. I just…don’t know why I’m here, or how. It’s a dream,” he explains, helpfully, and Steve frowns but sets the semiautomatic to one side, on a nightstand. It doesn’t look lived-in, the room. It looks temporary, transitory, Steve’s duffel neatly hanging in the open closet. _A safe house_ , Bucky’s brain supplies.

“You’re on the run,” he says, and Steve blows out a breath.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are. How are you here, I don’t understand. Wait—how are we _both_ here?” Because now they’re outside the goatherds’ camp, standing in waist-high grass, stars sizzling in that dark-velvet purple sky. Steve’s in a white t-shirt and khakis but still has the beard.

“I don’t know,” Bucky admits, although he’s pretty sure it has something to do with mixing booze and drugs (and isn’t about to tell Steve that). “But it’s real.” He reaches out with both his hands to take one of Steve’s between them, but he’s somehow back to one arm now, and wearing his red cloak again. He slots their fingers together anyway and hangs on tightly, heart unexpectedly in his throat.

Steve makes an inarticulate sound of pure frustration and need, kisses the back of Bucky’s hand before dropping it, and then Bucky’s in his arms, both of Steve’s wrapped so tightly around him he can barely breathe. It feels amazing. He reaches up and tangles his fingers in Steve’s long hair, then buries his face in the space between Steve’s neck and shoulder, breathing in the smell of cotton and sweat, hanging onto him. Steve kisses his temple and they stand there like that for what feels like forever, the length of Steve’s body pressed up against his from chest to thighs, hard and unyielding and so, so welcome. Bucky laughs a little at how good it is, breathlessly, then kisses the side of Steve’s neck. Jesus God, fucking _finally._

“Buck, I can’t let go of you,” Steve says, his voice low. “I’ve been so scared. Are you okay?”

“Better than, right now,” Bucky says, voice muffled. “What took you so long?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admits, kissing the side of his face some more. “Coward, I guess.”

“Captain America? Nah. Just intimidated by how smoking hot I am.”

It works; Steve huffs a laugh, but then he touches the other side of Bucky’s face to turn it toward him and there’s kissing, real kissing, which Bucky had sort of forgotten what that was like. Steve’s mouth is soft against his and then demanding, and he closes his eyes and lets Steve hold him up and kiss the hell out of him and it’s perfect, the quiet distant sound of the goats’ bells clinking and the hushed ocean-sound of wind through the acacia trees.

Bucky’s knees start to feel weak and he tugs at Steve’s hair and they go down together in the long grass, still kissing. He remembers what happened with M’Baku but it feels like the dream; this is real, Steve’s beard scratchy against his chin, Steve’s mouth hot against his neck, the hollow of his throat, his collarbone.

Finally he pulls back to let Bucky breathe, and shakes his head. “I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but Buck—we’re coming tomorrow—they told you that, right? There’s a—”

“—war on, yeah, I know. Who is it this time?”

“We can talk about it tomorrow.” He runs his fingers through the ends of Bucky’s hair, still speaking, but quietly, almost as if it himself. “You’ll look beautiful and I won’t be able to do this, then.”

“What, afraid Sam will make fun of you?”

Steve’s laugh sounds like a little like he’s crying. “Right now, just this, okay?”

In reply Bucky pulls Steve’s head down and fits their mouths together again.

And weirdly, this is when he loses consciousness, and wakes up, fingers scrabbling at his blankets, still clutching at the sense-memory of hair and skin and breath, light slanting from the doorway of the hut into his eyes.

There’s someone outside. He pulls his cloak around him and goes to see, stopping to help Olayemi lift some burlap sacks of feed. When he turns around the king is there with his entourage, holding a long dark box like a sniper rifle case. Shuri, too, and Okoye. They all look unhappy and serious.

“James,” T’Challa says, opening the box. “The world is ending, and we need your help.”

Bucky looks at the gleaming new arm, then back at the king. He swallows, once, hard. “Where’s the fight?”

**Author's Note:**

> Now, with its own [tumblr gifset](http://bert-and-ernie-are-gay.tumblr.com/post/173933783836/out-of-the-strong-comes-sweetness-6200-words)!
> 
> Sebastian Stan has said there was initially [a much longer cut](https://screenrant.com/black-panther-white-wolf-sebastian-stan/) of the White Wolf easter-egg scene at the end of _Black Panther_ , and I couldn't find the fic I wanted to read, so I had to write it.
> 
> There are [various, mostly conjectural maps](https://rachelstrohm.com/2016/05/28/where-is-wakanda/) as to where Wakanda is located, but I used the West African one, where it’s landlocked by Chad and Nigeria. It doesn’t make that much sense anyway for the Wakandans to be speaking Xhosa, therefore most of the language in this fic is Nigerian, either Igbo or Yorùbá (e.g., the song [Boju boju](https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=5012)”); whereas the [geography and climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Chad#Sahelian_region) are mostly that of Chad. Also, you too can have delicious [Wakandan jeweled vegetable pilau with braised lamb](https://tasty.co/recipe/wakandan-jeweled-vegetable-pilau-with-berbere-braised-lamb). Finally, [Samson’s riddle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson%27s_riddle) doesn’t make that much sense as a cultural touchstone here, but I used it for the title and epigraph anyway. Maybe Bucky will tell the story at M’Baku’s wedding.
> 
> At least twelve percent of the credit goes to [expatgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/profile) for her brilliant contributions, and to [betts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/profile) for her enthusiastic beta; any mistakes remaining are mine, all mine. And this fic is for cascat, because of important reasons.


End file.
